Tathra

Last week, I wrote primarily about Tathra Headland and the township. Now that the holiday period is just about over, I thought I would finish it with a post on the northern end of Tathra Beach, where the Bega River meets the sea. This is also my last Thursday post for the time being, as I really do need to get some work done! But the Tuesday posts will continue in a similar weekly format : a monthly feature plant; a favourite garden post; recipes or local beauty spots and a monthly garden post.

The Bega River meets the seaLow tide

The Bega River (48.6 km long) starts at the confluence of the Bemboka River and the delightfully-named Tantawangalo Creek at Moran’s Crossing. It travels east, then north north-east to Bega, where it is joined by the Brogo River, then continues south-east, then east to its mouth at the Tasman Sea via Moogareeka Inlet, 4 km north of Tathra.Moogareeka Inlet enters at the northern end of Tathra Beach and is the start (and southernmost point ) of Mimosa Rocks National Park.

View south from the northern end of tathra Beach back to Tathra Wharf and townshipThe shallow waters of Moogareeka Inlet and the bridgeMoogareeka InletSuch a tranquil place…at least when this photo was taken!

Fishermen also love the inlet, where they can catch: bream, dusky flathead, estuary perch, luderick, whiting, black fin, yellow fin, jewfish, mullet, tailor and bass. There are prawns in season, as well mussels and oysters on the rocks. A veritable feast indeed!

Steamed mussels for dinner!

The area has a rich aboriginal history. With all this abundance of seafood and fruits of the forest, the Yuin people led rich lives and tended to be less mobile than their cousins from the interior, who used to visit. Moogareeka Inlet was the end-point for a major travel route from the Monaro Tableland to the coast and was a popular camp for aborigines. Evidence includes :

Bunan Ground (raised ring of stones used in male initiation ceremonies) in the Moogareeka-Moon Bay area

Nearby rock shelter with occupation deposits

Fish trap in Lower Bega River, noted by George Robinson in 1844

Extensive middens at Moon Bay

Unfortunately, a road was built in the 1850s along the north side of the Bega River to access these middens, which were then carted away and crushed by the early settlers to make lime, used in mortar for the building boom in the recently gazetted township of Bega. There were probably other aboriginal artefacts (eg burials in the aeolian sands, isolated stone artefacts and scarred trees), but much would have been destroyed by logging, clearing and early cultivation.

The first encounter between aborigines and Europeans occurred in 1797, after the wreck of the ‘Sydney Cove’ with 3 survivors finally making it to Sydney after travelling up the coast. By the 1840s, most aboriginal men were employed as agricultural labourers or in the whaling industry, while the women worked as domestic servants or bore children to the occupiers of their land.

In 1843, former convict Fred Moon landed with sheep at a nearby bay, which later bore his family name, Moon Bay. He called his sheep property ‘Riverview’, as it was situated on the prominent headland overlooking the mouth of the Bega River.

‘Riverview’ on headland at the mouth of the Bega River‘Riverview’ with Tathra and Tathra Wharf in the backgroundLooking south to Tathra from ‘Riverview’ over the mouth of the Bega RiverBeach below ‘Riverview’ on Moogareeka Inlet

Over the years, there were a succession of owners and a large variety of agricultural enterprises from sheep and cattle grazing to dairy farming, orcharding and vegetable growing. The last owner, Mr Neil Ford, was even part of a government-sponsored scheme to grow drugs for pesticide manufacture. The old property is now known as Ford Headland.

The variety of enterprises is reflected in the large number of sheds, aviaries, pens, stockyards, coops, cages and fences. There are also the remains of the old 1890s house.‘Riverview’ (34 ha) was acquired by National Parks on 2nd October 1992 under the Coastal Lands Protection Scheme (1973), which allowed for the purchase of coastal areas of significant cultural and natural heritage values. It is one of the most significant former farming properties in Mimosa Rocks National Park.

It is always a fascinating spot to visit, as I love old, wild, overgrown gardens! An assessment by National Parks in 1999 identified over 80 exotic plant species, including an avenue of Golden Cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa), ornamental shrubs and the remains of orchards and vegetable gardens.

Black-eyed Susan vine climbing into a treeLooking up to ‘Riverview’ from Moogareeka InletThe old driveway

There is such a sense of history and it is wonderful imagining what the lives of the early settlers would have been like before modern day roads and bridges!!! I think that it would have been a fantastic place to grow up and explore!The shallowness of the water in Moogareeka Inlet make it an ideal spot for families and kids. There are boat launching ramps, a playground and BBQ and picnic facilities. Water sports include power boating, water skiing, wind surfing, swimming, snorkelling, fishing, canoeing and sailing. Here are 2 keen fishermen:Between Moogareeka Inlet and Wajurda Point , there are 3 small beaches, dominated by rocky reefs and backed by steep 20-30 m high bluffs. It is fun exploring the ridges and finding routes down to the beach, when the tide is too high to make it around the rocks.

Mouth of the Bega RiverLooking back south to the mouth of the Bega River and Tathra BeachWalking north from the mouth of the Bega RiverSheer cliffs add to the challenge of exploring this coastlineBeach just to the south of Moon Bay

Here are some photos of the wonderful geology:Moon Bay lies 500m south-west of Wajurda Point and forms a semi-circle 200m wide and 270 m long. The beach faces east and is well protected from the winds, so it is a popular spot for families ( as well as local nudists apparently!). The beach does shelve steeply and rapidly, so care should be taken when swimming. There are rips after periods of high waves. It has a low backing fore-dune and a small backing valley.

Looking at the northern end of Moon BayLooking at the southern end of Moon Bay

There are fascinating cliffs at the southern end of the beach – a geologist’s delight!

The large rock ledges projecting into the bay are perfect for rock fishing, especially at dusk. Fishermen catch bream, flathead, salmon, mulloway and gummy sharks.

Southern end of Moon Bay

At the northern end of the beach are remains of a log slide and mooring site, where timber and farm produce from ‘Riverview’ were loaded onto barges for transfer to waiting ships in the early days. Evidence includes the rusted stubs of mooring rings, grooves in the cliff face and a cutting.

Northern end of Moon Bay (250 m) : steep track with steps2. Link walk between former car park at the eastern end of Old Moon Bay Rd via the Moogareeka Fire Trail to Bay Drive Carpark.

Moogareeka Fire Trail

3. Bay Drive Car Park, Moogareeka Inlet :

Old ‘Riverview’ driveway (600 m), then a 700 m track through the old property to a signposted walking track down to the southern end of Moon Bay.

View of Moogareeka Inlet from Bay DriveLooking towards ‘Riverview’ from Bay Drive car parkWalk from ‘Riverview’ downhill to Moon BayWalking towards Moon Bay along the flatThe Neighbourhood Watch!The end of the walk : Moon BayScarred old tree from early days

We usually do this walk first, then return to Bay Drive car park via the Moogareeka Fire Trail. It is a lovely walk, especially as you descend on the old dirt road through the forest with tantalizing glimpses of Moogareeka Inlet through the trees. We’ve seen cyclists, a tiger snake, but no nudists as yet!

Acacia longifoliaStunning fruit of Pittosporum revolutumThis sleepy Tiger Snake gave us a bit of a fright on our Mothers’ Day walk last yearWe felt much safer with this little fellow!

Tathra is a small coastal township (population 1622) on the Sapphire Coast and is one of our favourite spots! It has the closest beach to Bega and is situated between Merimbula, 25 km to the south and Bermagui, 44 km to the north. It is 446 km south of Sydney via the Princes Highway and sits high on a bluff, overlooking its famous wharf. The 3rd and 4th photos show the view north to Wajurda Point and Moon Bay.

Tathra HeadlandHistoric Tathra WharfKingdom of the Sea EagleView to the north from Tathra: All part of Mimosa Rocks National Park

The area has a rich aboriginal history, which I will cover in next week’s post (A Slice of History), due to its abundant land and sea food resources. The name ‘Tathra’ means ‘beautiful country’ in the local Yuin dialect, though other sources suggest it has a slightly different meaning : ‘place of wild cats’!!!

The first Europeans in the area settled to the west of Tathra, illegally squatting on Crown Land in the 1820s and 1830s. At that stage, the area was outside the limits of legal settlement, known as ‘the 19 Counties’. See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Counties for more information. This rich dairying country is regularly flooded and teams with birdlife, especially water birds. Apparently, in the 1971 Bega Valley flood, water covered the 45 foot telegraph poles all the way along the mile long flat!

Dairy flats at Jellat JellatExtensive waterways and home of Bird Route No. 1Recent flooding this year

An enquiry into transport facilities in the Bega area in 1851 led to the formation of the Illawarra Steam Navigation Company in 1858. It was an amalgamation of smaller steamer services along the South coast : the Kiama Steam Navigation Company and vessels of the Twofold Bay Pastoral Association and Edye Manning’s fleet. The name was changed in 1904 to the Illawarra and South Coast Steam Navigation Company. The first cargo vessel, a 50 ton sailboat called ‘Vision’, arrived in Tathra that same year and moored offshore, its cargo being transported on a small boat to Kangarutha, where a store shed was erected at a small anchorage, ‘Stockyards’, later that year.

Tathra started out as a small jetty, known as the ‘Farmers’ Sea Wharf’. It was a shipping outlet for a group of local farmers, led by Daniel Gowing, who were fed up with having to transport their produce to Merimbula 25 km away, especially as the wagons often had to wait for the tide to go out when they crossed the beach at Bournda. Daniel Gowing was a farmer from Jellat Jellat, who opened the first store in Tathra for produce to be shipped soon after from Kangarutha.

In 1860, it was decided that Kianinny Bay was more sheltered for loading than Kangarutha, so a store was built at Kianinny. Cargo was still shipped from the beach by small boats to vessels, like ‘Gipsy’, ‘Ellen’, ‘You Yangs’ and ‘John Penn’, moored in the bay. Bad weather often held up the produce wagons on their way to the boats, so loading was uncertain and the freight costs high.

Kianinny Bay today

Tathra township was surveyed in 1861 and that same year, the jetty was replaced by a wharf, funded by donations from local farmers and The Illawarra and South Coast Steam Navigation Company. Regular shipping commenced in 1862 with PS Mimosa being the first ship to moor. The wharf was designed by prominent colonial engineer, Ernest Orpen Moriarty, and built by R. Mowatt with the help of Daniel Gowing and John Kirkwood. Turpentine logs, from the North Coast, driven into solid rock. It was sited in its current location, due to the protection from southerly winds, though the northerly waves still caused enough damage to necessitate continual repairs, including re-piling and changing the location of the piles, as piling techniques improved. The steep road down to the wharf also caused problems, requiring extra teams of animals to haul the fully-laden carts back up the hill.

The wharf from Tathra Beach

With the opening up of Crown Lands to free selection in 1861, the population rapidly expanded and the increased trade was reflected in major additions to the original wharf. A cargo shed was built in 1866. In 1868, the Bega-Tathra road was cleared to a width of one chain and in 1879, Tathra opened its first post office in Gowing’s Store, a general store and guesthouse, on the corner of the main road and the road down to the wharf.

Due to the expansion of shipping needs and the increase in the size of visiting ships and depth of moorings, major extensions to the wharf were made in 1873; 1878; 1886; 1889; 1903 and 1912, under the guiding hand of another well-known colonial engineer, Ernest Macartney de Burgh. In 1901, cattle and pig yards were built. The route between Tathra and Sydney became known as ‘the Pig and Whistle Line’, due to the transport of pigs, produce and passengers between the two locations. Apparently, as the boats rounded the corner, they would always blow a whistle and the pigs would start squealing!

View south from ‘Pig and Whistle Lookout’ on Tathra Headland to the point

In 1862, the Illawarra Steamship Company fleet consisted of 3 schooners : ‘Ellen’, ‘Gipsy’ and ‘Rosebud’; a clipper : ‘White Cloud’; and 3 steamers: a paddle steamer : ‘Hunter’ and 2 screw steamers : ‘John Penn’ and ‘Kameruka’, but the sailing ships were superseded by steamers after 1881.

The steamer service was crucial to the Far South Coast, as the roads were very poor and there was no railway service. The Princes Highway from Batemans Bay to the Victorian border was gravel up until the 1940s. Consequently, there was a chain of 15 reliable all-weather wharves up and down the coast, where the steamers would berth and deliver and pick up goods and passengers. Rixon’s wagon left Bega Post Office for Merimbula every Wednesday and Tathra on Mondays and Thursdays to take mail and passengers to and from the steamer. Produce from Tathra included : bacon, cheese, butter, timber, tallow, wattle bark, corn and wool. The boats would also carry prime beef and sheep, horses, pigs, poultry and turkeys, both for the Sydney markets and the Royal Easter Sydney Show. Mobs of up to 700 pigs would be walked to the wharf from local farms. One Bemboka farmer even walked her flock of turkeys over 50km to the wharf by coating her turkey’s feet in tar with a light dusting of sand! Ships arriving from Sydney brought tea, bags of flour and sugar, biscuits, farm machinery and parts, grains and seeds and household furniture.In 1907, the buildings were reconstructed and the present two-storey structure was built. Spring-loaded wrought iron buffers were introduced to assist the berthing of larger vessels in the difficult north-eastern seas. A mooring buoy was positioned north-east of the wharf, to which ships would attach a spring line. Between 1907 and 1912, there were more major extensions, including a subdeck; a jib crane to facilitate loading; a cattle race; a loading ramp and a passenger shelter. In 1914, soldiers and horses were farewelled from the wharf on their way to fight in the Great War. Here is an old photo of the volunteers leaving for the war, as seen on the noticeboard on Tathra Headland.The increase in transport by road had a major effect on the amount of shipping trade everywhere, but because the Far South Coast had no adjacent railway line to carry bulk freight to Sydney, shipping trade lingered on till 1954. By 1919, the number of passengers travelling by sea had greatly decreased, so the passenger shelter was replaced by a single storey shed, next to the two-storey building. Freight and cargo became the predominant trade from Tathra. During World War II, enemy activity off the Far South Coast of NSW, including German mines and Japanese submarines, had a further impact on the amount of trading. The last ship to work cargo was the 1929 SS Cobargo in 1954 and the even older SS Bergalia was the last steamer to visit the wharf later that year to remove valuable items of wharf equipment. The Illawarra and South Coast Steam Navigation Company suspended trading in 1958.Gradually, the wharf structure fell into disrepair and became unsafe, so a demolition order was issued in 1973. Fortunately, an active local group and National Trust banded together to oppose the demolition. The Tathra Wharf Trust was formed in 1977 and launched an appeal for the conservation and preservation of the old wharf. By 1982, only minor parts of the wharf, the mezzanine deck and a few of the more recent buildings had been demolished. The decking was replaced and the two-storey building was restored, the top storey becoming the Tathra Maritime Museum, dedicated to steamer history, and the bottom storey being used for a cafe and tourist outlet.

Between 1982 and 2010, road access was difficult, as one leg of the access loop road was closed by boulders after heavy seas smashed over the headland.These photos show the old road.It is now the only coastal steamer wharf left on the NSW coast and 1 of only 6 timber wharves still listed for preservation on the Register of the National Estate, as well as the NSW State Heritage Register. It is such a beautiful old building with chunky solid wooden beams and spectacular views and it is a wonderful reminder of our shipping past. The cafe is so impressive and provides top-quality meals, which are beautifully presented. It is also a great venue for selling local arts and crafts – we have some highly creative artists and artisans in the area.

Delicious Spiced Chai!

The wharf is also very popular with anglers, as well as seabirds!Tathra Beach has been a tourist destination from very early days. It is 3 km long and stretches from the wharf and Tathra Headland in the south to Moogareeka Inlet and the mouth of the Bega River to the north. It is protected from the Southerlies by the steep headland. Beach fishing yields :

Bream, whiting and mullet – using beach worms, pippies, prawns and fresh nippers as bait; and

Sand whiting – caught using sand worms and nippers.

Looking from Tathra Wharf back to Tathra Beach

It is a great spot for swimming with the Tathra Surf Club (formed in 1909) patrolling the beach every weekend from October to April, as well as Christmas Holidays and Public Holidays. Sail boarding, surfing and snorkelling off the wharf are also popular activities. It has been voted one of the cleanest beaches in NSW, which is not surprising, given the progressive and forward-thinking spirit of environmentally aware locals, who are establishing a solar farm in Tathra. See : http://cleanenergyforeternity.net.au/. Another very active local organization is the local volunteer fire brigade, which was established in 1945, with a 2nd new fire station built next-door in 2011. It is one of the most well-equipped fire brigades on the Far South Coast.

When full, the blue water drum at the top tips its contents onto unsuspecting kids below!

Another tourism drawcard for Tathra is its proximity to 2 wonderful National Parks : Bournda National Park in the south with 13 km of unspoilt coastline and Mimosa Rocks National Park in the north, which extends for 16 km. I shall be discussing Moogareeka Inlet, Ford Headland and Moon Bay, all within the southernmost section of Mimosa Rocks National Park and 4 km north of Tathra, in a separate post next week (A Slice of History), but will focus now instead on the spectacular Kianinny Bay, just to the south of Tathra.

Kianinny Bay is a protected bay with immediate access to the ocean. It is sheltered from Northerly winds and is an incredibly beautiful spot in all weathers, as seen in these photos taken from Chamberlain Lookout above.The coastline between Tathra Headland and Kianinny Bay includes steep cliffs and rugged rock masses, providing wonderful opportunities for rock fishing, using cunjevoi, abalone guts and cabbage weed to catch Black Drummer, Silver Drummer, Leatherjacket, Groper, Luderick and Banded Morwong all year round. From December to May, Bunito, Kingfish, Tailor and Salmon can be caught with live baits.Tathra really is a fisherman’s paradise with its beach and rock fishing, reef and bottom fishing and estuary fishing, as well as all the freshwater streams and dams. The closest reef section is 6 km south of Tathra, 800 m out from White Rock and extending several kilometres out. Fish caught here include : Snapper, Morwong, Flathead, Leatherjacket and Gummy Shark. We found this flathead in a rock pool left high and dry on White Rock after the tide receded – a very easy catch (though we didn’t!)Boats leave Kianinny Bay to drift fish the outskirts of Tathra Bay, catching Sand Flathead and Tiger Flathead, using flesh baits and plastic jigs, and Gunnards and Gummy Sharks. Little wonder that Kianinny Bay is home to the Tathra Fishing Club. There are excellent boat launching facilities : a concrete boat ramp for vessels up to 7 m long; plenty of parking; areas to wash down the boats and tables to clean the fish, as well as a BBQ and picnic area and playground. Sting Rays regularly cruise up and down the shallows, competing for fish scraps with the local sea gulls and cormorants, and can be a little disconcerting for swimmers! Snorkelling and spear fishing are also popular. These photos show a very relaxed swimmer, two very large, friendly sting rays and a sea hare.

Kianinny Bay forms the north-eastern tip of Bournda National Park and is the starting off point for the 9 km long Kangarutha Track, south through cliffs, rock debris and small inlets to Turingal Head. See : http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/things-to-do/Walking-tracks/Kangarutha-walking-track. I will be covering this national park and walking track in a later post. It is a beautiful walk with fabulous coastal views and plenty of bird and animal life, as well as interesting vegetation. I will finish with photos of a Golden Whistler on Tathra Headland, some stunning feral vegetation and a very street-wise local resident!